PARTY POLITICS CLOUD TORY CLIMATE PLAN
Convoluted mess of a plan will have worse results for environment, says
Imagine someone from the government came along and said that every time you filled up your car, you had to pay some guy named Frank five bucks. Not a penny of this would go to the government. But it would be the law that for each fill-up, you gave Frank $5. This isn't a tax, the person from the government would stress, since the state isn't getting a dime of it. Just Frank.
If you're Frank, this is great news. For the rest of us, well, you're still out $5 per fill-up.
This hypothetical scenario is entirely made up, and admittedly a little bit absurd. But then again, “a little bit absurd” is also a good way to describe the Conservatives' new carbon ... uhh ... whatever we're supposed to call it. Definitely not a tax! Conservative Leader Erin O'toole wants us to be crystal clear on that. It ain't a tax! It's just a mandatory fee that you'll be charged, by law, every time you purchase fuel. That fee will go into a personal account that you'll be able to use to buy green-friendly products, like a transit pass or, apparently, home-energy retrofits, like a more fuel-efficient furnace.
It's been a strange year and a bit, folks. A lot has happened. But even by the wild standard of late, this proposal is still a bit of a head scratcher. The Conservatives, the party of small government and individual choice, are going to impose a mandatory fee on an essential good, but then give you back the money, while limiting how you spend it. This will add costs, and since the Conservatives will set the carbon price lower than the Liberals, will be less effective at curtailing emissions than what Justin Trudeau has already proposed. (Both parties would tax heavy industrial emitters.)
But for the general public, the Tory plan amounts to making government bigger and constraining personal choice ... to own the Libs.
In fairness to O'toole, he's in an impossible situation. The bizarre
Conservative plan needs to be seen in the context of the Conservatives' unenviable political reality, rather than through the lens of a public policy intended to meaningfully reduce Canada's carbon emissions.
O'toole has a set of facts-onthe-ground before him that probably induce a migraine every time he foolishly, in a moment of self-loathing, allows himself to ponder them. He's strong in the West, needs a big break in the East, will be roundly attacked by all the other parties if he does nothing, will anger at least some of his base if he does anything, and, if we're blunt about this, is never going to go bigger on climate than the Liberals, NDP or Greens. He has sworn to get rid of the Trudeau carbon tax, but needs to do something. But there is nothing he can do without creating a new problem for himself, and whatever he does can't be a tax, or anything remotely like a tax, lest he be accused of breaking his word (no, no, wait, he's being accused of that, anyway).
See? You probably all got a migraine just reading that last paragraph.
If the Conservative climate plan is a bit of a joke, it at least has that in common with how most Canadians feel about climate issues. Polls have repeatedly shown that the Canadian public is very, very worried about climate change, and very, very reluctant to do a damn thing about it, because we're overwhelmingly unwilling to shoulder any additional costs. This either means that Canadians don't really think climate change is the threat they tell pollsters it is, or they agree it's a huge threat, but they just want someone else to do something about it. (This would actually be fairly typically Canadian, come to think of it — we are a country that wants only the best, but doesn't want to pay a penny to get it.)
In a weird way, O'toole probably could have simply announced that he was keeping the Trudeau plan, but cutting all the costs in half, and that Canada would consider raising the cost of carbon only once the world's major emitters were willing to take the issue seriously. A cynical but honest Canadian carbon policy could have been a simple “We'll get real when the rest of you do.” This is probably closer to where the average Canadian voter truly sits than anyone would like to admit.
But again, that's policy. O'toole must deal with politics. So we get this convoluted kludge of a plan, where lower prices will produce worse results for the environment than the Liberal plan, at the expense of bigger government and less personal choice, and all so that O'toole can tell voters that he's doing something while assuring his own base that whatever this is, it's not a tax.
It doesn't make any sense. But it might actually be about as good a policy as this iteration of the Conservative party — which has spent years demonizing a simple, clear-cut carbon tax but now finds itself needing to offer up something if it ever hopes to win — can possibly come up with.
It doesn't make any sense. But it might actually be about as good a policy as this iteration of the Conservative party — which has spent years demonizing a simple, clear-cut carbon tax — can come up with.